Introduction
Upgrading to new facilities is usually the easiest way to expand production capacity. Yet, before making such capital-intensive investments, it's necessary to make sure that current resources are being maximized. A major manufacturing business, set to install an extra shot blasting and paint booth facility, engaged the services of Production Modeling India (PMI) to gauge if the expansion was needed. The objective was to assess the actual capacity utilization of current systems and identify bottlenecks and time losses within daily operations.
Client's Challenge
• Analyze the effectiveness of existing resources before considering infrastructure expansion
• Identify non-value-added (NVA) activities that impact throughput
• Determine whether operational tweaks could offset the need for new capital investment.
PMI’s Approach
PMI adopted a holistic and data-driven approach:
Pinpointed all operations linked to the shot blasting and painting sequence.
Full-day monitoring was conducted to capture detailed process timings, idle periods, and interruptions.
Used a structured loss capturing sheet to categorize delays into specific buckets (waiting time, setup delay, equipment unavailability, etc.).
Separated the observed activities into value-added (VA) and non-value-added (NVA) segments to quantify inefficiencies.
Estimated work content for each operation and calculated total capacity for both the current system and an optimized version without additional infrastructure.
Built a scalable template to estimate work content for existing and new products, enabling future planning and manpower forecasting.
Results & Impact
- Annual production capacity was accurately calculated based on real-world data.
- Resource utilization levels improved, revealing that the existing system could meet demand.
- Identified and eliminated bottlenecks and NVA activities, significantly improving throughput.
- Avoided the need for an additional shot blasting and paint booth, saving both capital and floor space.
- Provided a dynamic planning tool to support future growth.
How PMI Helped a Manufacturer Avoid Costly Expansion with Capacity Optimization - A Case Study
Conclusion
PMI’s production study turned a potential investment into an operational win. With deeper insight into real-time performance and well-calculated improvements, the client enhanced capacity without new infrastructure—maximizing value from what they already had.